Classes are out!

I didn't hang around Cairo long.

Over the summer I met a Texan classmate named Jonathan in a roundabout way. We began with the Yukon in common: he had visited on a trip up the Alaska Highway to go roughneck in Dead Horse, Alaska.

Anyone who has travelled to the Yukon -- or whose first cousin once did -- tells me about it. This is supposed, I gather, to make us friends. Perhaps it is a way of telling me that they too come from hardy stock, or that we share the frontier spirit? They are just like me, because once they set foot on the permafrost out of which I grew.

But they don't know that the Yukon is not a place. It never has been: It is an idea; the spirit of an age. This age is an age long past. So the Yukon attracts old souls, those who have lived many lives. These are they who congregate at the ends of the earth, finding in finis terrae australis the echo of the aurora borealis.

Let me give an example. The Canadian beaver was imported to Tierra del Fuego in the early 1900s in order to create a fur trade. It was so successful that today it has flooded the forests around Ushuaia and completely destroyed them. It is a bane and the locals seek -- in vain -- to destroy it. I do not know whether they have begun dynamiting the lodges, which is the best method, based on our experience in the Yukon. But what I mean is this: the beaver must have felt as I did arriving in Ushuaia. In going to the furthest point on the globe from its origins, it had, in spirit, returned home. And it prospered.

This spirit cannot be acquired by setting foot in a place. It cannot be tamed, bottled and sold for mass consumption, as they do the "mud of the Alaska highway". As the Singaporean military propaganda reads: that mud on your face is the soil of your nation. The only place that mud does anything is on your face, not in a can on the bookshelp at home.

That is why it means nothing to me when people tell me they have been to the Yukon. This idea, which I struggle to express, is encompassed succinctly in the distinction between Cheechakos and Sourdoughs. They are two worlds apart, though both have been to the same places. But when the Trappers and Gold miners didn't realize is that Cheechako and Sourdough are states of mind, not mere matters of time spent in a place. Some people born in the Yukon are still Cheechakos, and some people are Sourdoughs before they ever arrive, though they have never heard the word. That is why many people I knew growing up struggled to leave, while I dream only of returning.

Generally, two kinds of people visit the Yukon: retirees, and hippies. Both come as Cheechakos, and leave as Cheechakos.

The retirees, needless to say, have a style of travel that is approximately 10 to the power 15 degrees removed from mine. Of course, like everyone, I think my way of doing things is best, and therefore I cannot agree with them. Floating casinos and restaurants with a view to Glacier Bay? 160 ft. land yachts towing hummers as their "town car"? No thank you.

The hippies I resent too, although I find the girls cute, especially in Dawson. Predictably, they are all from large cities and have bourgeois upbringings that embedded the angst they now seek to dissipate through travel and closeness to the real people and places of the earth. Usually they have a sibling who is an investment banker or lawyer. They will give you a URL where you can see some sweet digital pictures of their friend wearing peasant dress in Guatamala, showing solidarity with the salt of the earth. Predictably, they fall in love with the Yukon (which they think they understand better than the locals), go home to Toronto, and make webpages telling others exactly how to go to the places where they too can find themselves. All of the best mountaintops for Yoga, I'm sure, are listed.

It is like writing about Bedouin hospitality in the Lonely Planet. The Bedouin are famous for their hospitality because offering of food and water to strangers is essential to survival in the desert. In search of an authentic Middle Eastern experience, innumerable "desert travelers" have taken minibuses out of town for the day to experience this and write home: "Dear Mother, on his way to Dimascus Lawrence of Arabia stopped here just like we did. That's where we're going too, mother." (read with British accent for full effect)

Now you'll find the Lonely Planet still telling of Bedouin hospitality, but with a useless warning not to abuse this hospitality. The warning is a moral disclaimer so that the editors won't feel bad about ruining this place and that tradition. Full stop.

Confession: I have a lonly planet. However, my rule of thumb in Cairo was to focus on visiting anything NOT in it. And I didn't tell anyone about it later, as I have taken to no longer telling much about the Yukon except the long winters and killer mosquitos. I cannot reconcile love for a place with the fact that sharing it will ruin it. I cannot reconcile having travelled to many places thanks to lonely planet with my hatred of being able to tell immediately upon visiting a place whether it is in a guidebook or not by the number of foreigners there.

What happens to a very few souls when they travel North, or to other ends of the earth, is that they open a line of communication with their previous selves. It is a sudden, tingling connectivity across eons of time and light years of space. I cannot explain it except to liken it to a feeling of deja vu on a level thousand times more profound than the experiences with which that phrase is usually associated. It is an inexplicable belonging; the sensation of a massive presence -- so large and unmistakable, yet completely indescribable.

An artist looks at a stone and knows that in it lies the statue of David. How can it be gotten out? Travelling to the North may be a glimpse of the David. I have uncomfortably incubated emotions without expression then read a poem that hatched them in a few inspired and infuriating lines. Travelling to the North may be like reading that poem.

Until that time, these things are an itch that one desires to soothe but does not know how to scratch. It is like having, as Blaise Pascal said, a God-shaped hole in your heart, but the hole is filled by empty space, silence, and nothingness.

Having referred in a previous post to Louis L'Amour, maybe now I can added to my gilded list of sources Jean M. Auel, who wrote the Clan of the Cave Bear series. I read these books by headlamp on the school bus at around age 11 or 12 (it is dark in the morning and after school in the Yukon in winter). You will understand shortly why, along with cowboy novels, I remember these books so vividly.

In the Valley of the Horses, the protagonist Ayla is to have her first rites with the cave-man Jondalar. He is an expert in this art, and very experienced. He has made many girls tremble with pleasure on her first night where others would only have inflicted pain (keep in mind, according to the story they are cave-men).

Ayla is not a virgin (in fact she has been a mother), but she has never had an orgasm. As the slow, passionate evening evolves under the heavy warm furs of their cave, Ayla cries out to Jondalar: "I want -- I want, something..." She cannot finish the sentence because she does not know the word for what she wants. She has never had it and she grew up with the mute Neanderthal.

Travelling to the ends of the earth may be like finding release after crying out your whole life: "I want -- I want, something..." Growing up in the city, you never had it. Surrounded by civilization, we live amidst a neanderthal world with no word for ecstasy -- with no knowledge of the most profound expression of human nature. But you need not find the words: as the act alone suffices, so too does the silence, the open spaces, the nothingness. Thus, for a few travellers, travelling to one of these places is necessary to recognize something in themselves: The Wilderness.

These are the Sourdoughs.

I realized, I know not how, that Jonathan was a Sourdough. So I thought it might be good if we did some travelling together, and he apparently felt the same way about me.

Jon had imported his BMW motorcycle from Texas earlier in the year, as the license plates clearly revealed (indeed a little too clearly, considering where we aimed to drive -- without, I should add, the usual .12 gauge that only a Texan or a Yukonner carries as a matter of course). I couldn't have dreamt anything so preposterous, but a Yukon-Dallas motor-cycle team crossing the Middle East on a bike with Texan plates seemed just right to me. Though the trip itself would prove less glamorous, the idea at least would burn down civilization and all its categories. From the wreckage the wreckage, we would rebuild a kinetic Utopia known only to us, and existing only as long as we kept moving. Like the Masai, if we were captured and held, we would die.

So after a twenty four hour setback due to a brake failure (the brake light still flashes from time to time, but Jon assures me he had it fixed) we set out across the Sinai to Nuweiba. From Nuweiba, a ferry to Aqaba allows you to circumvent Israel (necessary for entry into Syria). We then headed up through Jordan, and yesterday crossed the Syrian Border.

There have been many incidents along the way to which only my journal shall bear witness. I wish to tell for now only one.

Sometimes there are Visa problems, crossing into Syria. You have to get the visa through the embassy in your country if Syria has diplomatic representation there. However, FedEx-ing my passport to Ottawa was impossible. It would have taken too long and would have nailed me to Cairo since, as in all police states, travel internally in Egypt is impossible without a passport. I had heard, however, of people who did not have the visa entering legally (perhaps the policy set internationally has not trickled down) or with bribes.

Bypassing Amman entirely, we stopped a few kilometres from the border to eat a massive amount of fatty food (in anticipation of the wait) and discuss the options. First try all border crossings. Second, I thought I was prepared to walk across if I was denied and meet Jon in a Syrian town on the other side. The other option, if sanity prevailed on that given day (never known until the morning of) was to take a plane to Cyprus or mainland Turkey from Amman. A distant fourth was my original plan: scuba diving in Sinai. (I don't know whether I subconciously don't like diving, but every time I plan a diving holiday I hatch elaborate and impromptu schemes to involve myself in whatever local events are making headlines). We also discussed how one bribes border officials discreetly, a matter with which I had no experience.

Clearing out of Jordan with us were three Yellow dukes of hazard cars with Syrain plates: the Amman Damascus taxi service, Est. 1971, and operating with the same vehicles since. We saw two disheartening sights in the no-man's land between Jordan and Syria.

First, the line of traffic back into Jordan was massive. Every car was getting the automobile version of a cavity search, slowing things down to a crawl and leaving us wondering what the passengers and driver were being subjected to indoors. It would take hours to get back through if we were turned around, and all we would do is head for the next border crossing to try again.

Second, observation towers were visible on hills to the east. Under a powerline lay a distinctly well-groomed tract of land with no vegetation, about 40 m wide. Jonathan shouted: "mine field." I was looking for the signs. I had told him earlier why I thought the tactical value of a minefield at a border, unlike in a combat situation, was increased by signs. In Tierra del Fuego there were minefields near the ferry port, and they were marked in Spanish, English and German. I told Jon I thought it would be the same here. There were no signs, but this was clearly a minefield.

We waved at the humvee with .50 calibre machine gun mounted on top and they waved back, smiling.

The two kilometres between the exit and entry points are full of beautiful olive orchards. I recognized them as olives from my visit to the Olave farm in Chile. I said to Jon:

"This is where you would have to get out, on the Syrian side of the minefield, and try to pick your way through the orchard." I knew, though, that this was not an option any longer and we would have to make it be proper means. I was just fantasizing about my missed career in the special forces as forward recon. No one would ever have been better, tougher, more capable of learning local languages or E&E (Escape and Evasion in SAS jargon), but my file would have shown a lengthy record of discriplinary problems and clashes with superiors.

We missed taking a picture of the "Welcome to Syria" sign. Jon said,

"Should we go back?" But we both knew the answer was no: this wasn't tourism.

"They don't really like pictures here, I heard."

I got out my camera though, and kept it handy but out of sight. There were two more "welcome" signs along the way. Having missed the first, I said to hell with the second as well. By the time the third came I took a picture, thinking that if I didn't there might be a forth. It was getting kind of weird to have so many signs, but I guess the Syrians are really friendly people. Maybe that's why they didn't make the Axis of Evil cut. (Axes, like the Trinity, lose something of their mystical attraction if they have more than three components). I was sure the friendliness would soon be gone and we would see blood flowing in the streets once we cleared the border.

The border was a relatively orderly, if bureaucratic place. I couldn't smell the smoke of funeral pyres where babies are burned yet, but was sure they were just around the corner. We went in to get our passport stamps. I asked Jon what my story was, so that we'd be straight if they questioned us separately. He just smiled and said, "see what comes to you man." Total improv: I love it. I remember when a girl from work at the Supreme Court was trying to sneak her boyfriend across the border to the States. They had plans A-F all worked out, ahand contacted relatives as far away as South Africa to go over the cover story in case customs called. It was clever, and a better job than I could have done, but totally banalized the one bad thing she ever did in her entire life, and made the one chance we had of being friends so uninteresting to me. But that's the thing about lawyers: they brake the law, they just do it in extraordinarily boring ways.

But I had a bothersome rational streak myself that caused me to show Jon a false marriage certificate (I was married in Whitehorse two years ago). It was necessary to stay in the same room when travelling with Elizabeth in Egypt.

"I'm going to visit my wife in Damascus. She was working in Lebanon but has been left homeless by the Israeli aggression and is in a hotel in need of my help." I thought this might strike the appropriate chord: married good, girlfriends bad; Lebanon good, Israel bad.

We met Americans who had been waiting 3 hours (6.5 by the time we left; probably were turned back later that night). They were of Arab descent (or so I thought), but it didn't really seem to be helping their case. In fact, I later learned that one of them was Michael Perez, a Cuban immigrant who "accepted" (the word has the correct religious inevitability to it: you might as well just give up and recognize Truth) Islam in Miami 9 years ago and then married a Moroccan girl in Michingan. Since, he has become an activist in favour of Palestinian rights, and was deported from Israel. Wow, I thought I was struggling with my identity.

Yet, all of this planning for the worst proved to be farfetched imagination: nothing but an attempt to make my life more interesting and fraught with peril and hardship than it really is. The whole thing reminded me of a much sexier but equally unnecessary night crossing of the border to Tibet I recently read about on the Internet. Within a record-breaking 3.5 hours -- and for less than the cost of the visa from the Embassy in Canada, not including FedEx fees -- I had a single entry visa into Syria.

We cleared the bike with the Carnet de Passage and revved up down the open road to Dimascus. I let out a "YEEHAA!" that I thought Jon would appreciate. And he must have, because he joined me in wailing the same off-key call of the open trail.

We didn't realize there was one more police check, about 100m down the road. No problems, but hitting the breaks and having to show our passports again was a crushing anti-climax. As we cleared through, another "Yeeha" seemed too embarassingly preposterous.

It was dark now. In silence, we turned onto the road to Damascus.